


Blue Moon

by what_alchemy



Series: Timestamp [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Aftercare, Anal Sex, Barebacking, Bottom Steve Rogers, Felching, M/M, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Public Sex, Rimming, Road Trips, Sex Toys, amputated limb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 11:39:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1468099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Now are you gonna run away with me or not, Rogers?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Moon

Bucky fit snug on the back of Steve’s motorcycle, the apex of his thighs tight around Steve’s hips. Steve didn’t bother to deny that he enjoyed the knot of heat against the crack of his ass, the clamp of one arm around his waist, the press of Bucky’s face into the back of his neck. Most states had helmet laws these days, and that would put a damper on this new intimacy, but Steve was willing to wait until he got pulled over, and he was also willing to cash in on being Captain America when it happened. He wasn’t exactly proud of that, but despite accusations to the contrary, he was not a perfect man. He just wanted Bucky’s skin against his own, any way he could get it.

It had been a long year of not touching. It had been a long year of pretending not to look. 

“Well?” he said as he started up. “Where do you want to go?”

The arm around him tightened for a moment, and he shivered as he felt Bucky’s breath ghost humid against his neck. 

“Never thought I’d see the Grand Canyon,” Bucky said, lips catching on the lobe of Steve’s ear.

“Sounds good,” Steve said. “We’ll stop at all the botanical gardens along the way. I support your dream of being a florist.”

Bucky’s laugh vibrated through Steve’s body. He gripped the handles of his bike harder.

“Just drive, Rogers.”

—

Their first stop was the Liberty Bell. Bucky took a picture of Steve standing next to it.

“This is a bit much,” Bucky said.

“Let me see.” Steve took Bucky’s phone out of his hand. Sure enough, he was making the same face as he had in the Captain America propaganda films, the face where directors told him to smile real handsome and it just came out terrified. “Oh, Lord.”

“This is not American enough,” Bucky said, looking at him sidelong. “Quick, get some apple pie and free market capitalism in there, on the double.”

“Get over there,” Steve said, nudging Bucky toward the bell. He pointed the phone at Bucky, watched through the screen as he tucked hair behind his ear. “Say ‘proletariat.’” Bucky smirked and held up his middle finger, and Steve snapped a picture. 

The line was long, and they left quick, Bucky’s hand stuck in the pocket of his leather jacket. They were shoulder to shoulder, walking silently down 6th Street when Steve glanced Bucky’s way, and Bucky’s gaze skittered away.

“So, um.” Steve cleared his throat. “Bartram’s Garden isn’t far from here, if you want to take a look. I heard it was really great.”

Bucky’s mouth tilted wryly.

“Sure,” he said. “But can we eat first?”

“You’re reading my mind,” Steve said. “I think I saw some restaurants around Washington Square.”

“Sushi,” Bucky said, and picked up his pace. Steve laughed and walked faster to catch up.

—

They stopped for the night in a motel just outside Columbus, Ohio. Steve’s legs felt like jelly, serum or not, and he collapsed into one of the beds as soon as they got through the door. He threw an arm over his eyes, but then he felt Bucky looming over him. He moved his arm and cracked an eye. Bucky was hovering at the edge of the bed Steve had claimed, fingers flexing at his side. His hair was windblown and dirty, and Steve wished he could reach out and smooth it down.

“I could drive tomorrow,” Bucky said. “If you wanted.”

“And I’d let you, if you’d brought your other arm along for the ride.”

Bucky scoffed. “Only amateurs need two arms for the easy ride we’re on, Rogers.”

“You callin’ me an amateur?”

“Best believe it.”

There was a moment’s pause, and then Steve lunged, catching Bucky in a headlock and dragging him down into the bed. Bucky laughed and pitched them into a roll. He freed his arm from underneath Steve and used it to dig his fingertips into Steve’s ribs. They forced ragged giggles from Steve’s belly and he squirmed to get away.

“How dare you!” Steve gasped. He kept laughing and slumped into Bucky bodily, face buried in his chest. 

“You never learn,” Bucky said. “I know all your weak spots.” Carefully, he set his arm across Steve’s shoulders, buried his hand in Steve’s hair. Steve’s breath caught in his throat, even as the laughter lingered. Steve squeezed his eyes shut.

“I gotta shower,” he said.

“Yeah, you reek,” Bucky said. Steve cuffed him lightly on the hardest part of his head. The arm around him gripped him tighter. “Stay a minute,” Bucky said softly.

Steve breathed in the scent of him, overlaid with grit and wind. He was still there underneath.

—

Steve had been to Sherman Brothers’ to pick up Bucky before. It wasn’t as if he’d shown zero interest. It just seemed frivolous, and unnecessary, and wasteful. But now, watching Bucky smile at an old lady the same way he used to smile at the girls in the dance halls when he was young, Steve could see that it nourished something in him that had gone unfed for decades. It was peaceful. How could he begrudge that?

Steve hid behind some hanging baskets spilling over with a riot of pinkish purple things, but as soon as the old lady left with a jaunt in her step and a bouquet in her hands, Bucky’s smile dropped and he met Steve’s surveillance with a scowl. 

“Hey, Akshay?” he called over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go on break, okay?”

There was a grunt from the back, and Bucky rounded the corner of the counter and stalked over to Steve, looking like nothing so much as an assassin with his mark in his sights. 

“What is today, open season on Bucky Barnes?” Bucky said. He pushed at Steve’s shoulder and Steve gave and gave until they were outside the shop. “If you’re just here to give me more shit, you can save it, pal. I’m gonna move out.”

Steve’s heart stopped and his mouth went dry. “What?”

Bucky looked away and leaned against the brick of the building. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and popped one in his mouth before fishing out a lighter. Steve had learned quick not to offer his help with traditionally two-handed activities, and sure enough, Bucky’s hand was deft and precise, as if he’d never needed that pesky left arm anyway.

Bucky took a long drag and stared out at the street.

“I’m in your way,” he said. “We used to be…whatever we were, but it’s a whole new century, and we’re whole new people. You hate me now, even if you’re trying not to, and Steve, I can’t fucking stand to have you hating me. So yeah, I’m moving out. There’s a little place I found not far from here, so.”

Steve’s heart was thundering, and he knew it was psychosomatic but he could feel his throat closing and his lungs quaking and it was just like an asthma attack, it was just like the terrible thing that used to steal his breath away. 

“Look, can we just — talk first? Um. Really talk, no static or jokes or…whatever. And then if you want to move out still, of course you can do that, but I just… need to say some things. And you probably do too. I’d like to talk to you, Buck. We haven’t really done that, have we?”

Bucky finally looked at him, brows drawn heavily down, mouth a mournful arc. He took a puff of his cigarette and handed it to Steve. Steve took it without thinking, and Bucky pushed open the door and leaned into the shop.

“Akshay? Listen, I’m gonna pop off early, okay?”

“Barnes, you have to help straighten and count the register!”

“Yeah, sorry, I’ll make it up to you later, okay?”

“Barnes!”

“Bye!”

Bucky rocked back on his heels and beat it away from the shop. 

“Hey!”

“Are you coming or not, Rogers?”

Steve jogged to catch up, only to stop short when Bucky ducked into a coffee shop. He flicked Bucky’s cigarette away and followed him in. He found the shop devoid of customers, the counter manned by a single barista playing on his phone. Bucky disappeared into a back room and Steve trailed after him.

“No one’s ever in here,” Bucky said. “The coffee’s terrible and the service is worse.” He kicked out a chair to sit in and Steve took the one opposite him at the tiny table he’d chosen. There was an array of fashionably unfashionable couches and armchairs, but the table would force him to meet Bucky’s eyes in a way none of the cushy seats were situated for. Steve wished he had something with which to occupy his hands. A cup of terrible coffee would be just the thing.

“You want coffee? Tea? One of those scone looking things?”

Bucky fixed him with an unimpressed look, flat-mouthed and arch-browed. Steve deflated.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Bucky said, “just say what you have to say. Maybe if you’re quick enough I can go salvage myself from Akshay’s wrath.”

“And if what I have to say is an apology?”

Bucky sat back, knees spread wide as if to brace himself. His hand was curled into a loose fist on the tabletop, and his eyes narrowed minutely as if assessing Steve for a threat. Steve had to wonder how they had come to this. How had he become a threat to the strongest man he’d ever known? He took a steadying breath.

“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve said. “I’m sorry for the things I said the other day, and I’m sorry I’ve been a horse’s ass about SHIELD and the flowers and what you want to do. It was…not well done of me. I’m gonna be better. I’m choosing to be better.”

Bucky moved his hand into his lap and exhaled, slow and deliberate. He looked at a point to the left of Steve’s head. 

“The thing is, Steve, I don’t want you to _tolerate_ me,” he said. “That’s — that would be worse than anything, can you understand that?”

“I’m not,” Steve said. “I swear, I’m not.” He leaned in and settled his elbows on the table, extending one hand over to Bucky’s side. “Having you back has been… indescribable. It’s been my greatest joy, Buck. I’m sorry I ever made you think otherwise. I’m sorry I ever made you feel like I didn’t want you around. You’re — everything. You always have been. You must know that.”

“How am I supposed to know that?” Bucky snapped. “You have two modes, Steve: tiptoeing around me like I’m about to crack, and making damn sure I know you disapprove of everything I do. You don’t want _me_ , Steve, you want who I used to be, and how you felt when it was just you and me against the world. You wish the pair of us had come out of the war alive and unscathed in an alternate universe that would throw us a pride parade in 1945. Well, pal, that shit didn’t happen. These are the cards we’ve been dealt. Don’t tell me how fucking _sorry_ you are when all you’re really sorry about is how we’re too damn broken to fit together anymore.” He was breathing hard, and his cheeks had gone red. Steve’s heart plummeted into his stomach.

“No,” Steve said, voice cracking. Bucky rolled his eyes and refused to look at him, but he pressed his lips together and stayed where he was. “Those guys we were — they couldn’t even tell each other they were soft on one another. They could barely admit it to themselves. I don’t miss that for a second, Buck. And if — if you weren’t around, leaving your arm any old place for me to trip over, or burning something you saw on the cooking channel, or showing me horrible things on the internet… I don’t know what I’d do, Buck. I’d be half dead again, going around like a sad sack and making people wonder why that Rogers boy can’t have fun.” 

Steve turned his hand palm-up on the table, and Bucky stared at it for a long moment before he set his hand on top. Steve tangled their fingers together, and his breath came out shaky. 

“Bucky. I know we’re not, I don’t know, the kind of people who do this. But I have to say it, even if it’s just this once. When you were gone, I always wished I’d said it, and every day you’ve been back and I haven’t said it has been a waste. I love you. I loved you when we were kids, and I loved you when we grew up, and I loved you when I thought I’d never see you again. I love you now, with your hair and your stump and your flowers. It’s not very original or eloquent or anything, but. It’s there. It’s not going anywhere. The sky is blue, grass is green, Steve Rogers is in love with Bucky Barnes. And I thought you should know.”

“I’m a killer,” Bucky said.

“So am I.”

“Not like this. Not like me.”

“I don’t care.”

“Moral relativism, Steven? I am shocked.”

“There are rules to this conversation, Bucky,” Steve said. “No jokes. No sarcasm. Just God’s honest truth. Natasha’s orders.”

“Natasha doesn’t believe in God.”

“Bucky.”

Bucky pulled his hand out of Steve’s and dragged it over his forehead. He tucked a recalcitrant lock of hair behind an ear. Finally, finally, he met Steve’s eyes, and Steve’s heart stumbled. 

“The idea of being used as a weapon again, even with my mind intact, makes me want to die.”

Steve was aware of the own quick labor of his breath.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll never bring up SHIELD again. I was an idiot to keep pushing it when I could see you didn’t want any part of it.”

“Is it what you want?”

“What do you mean?”

“You could do anything, Steve. You’re not poor anymore. You don’t have bad health. And you don’t owe it to SHIELD to be the dog they unleash when they decide something’s a threat. You died for your country once already. Now that country is occupying other countries, bombing civilians, throwing its weight around just because it can. It’s hard to reconcile that with the country we once fought for.”

That stung, but only because it had hit its mark.

“Yeah,” Steve said, dropping his eyes. “I know. It’s been bothering me for longer than I wanted to admit.”

“So let’s go.”

Steve looked up.

“Huh? Where?”

“Anywhere. We can do anything, for the first time in our lives. So let’s.”

“What about your job?”

“There are other flower shops, Steve.”

“I don’t…”

“I love you, too,” Bucky said in a rush, eyes darting away. He seemed to steel himself when he forced his gaze back to Steve’s. “I’m glad I finally get the chance to say it. Now are you gonna run away with me or not, Rogers?”

“You know? I think I am.”

—

Bucky took the second shower, and when he came back out dressed in a t-shirt and boxers, he hovered by the empty bed. Steve was flicking mindlessly through the five channels on the motel television. Steve turned his head to look at him, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“Should I have gotten just the one bed?” Steve asked, voice low. Bucky’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I didn’t want to pressure you.”

“Would you mind?” Bucky gestured vaguely to the space on Steve’s bed.

“God, no. I’d rather, actually.”

“We don’t have to do anything that would threaten your virtue.”

Steve smirked.

“As I recall, you were there when I lost my virtue about eighty years ago.”

Bucky cracked a smile, and his eyes went half-lidded as if remembering. That night had been a good one — late summer, 1934, wearing little in the hotbox of their apartment and tipsy on half-pints from the bar down the way. Steve’s shorts had slipped low down his hips, and Bucky had given the exposed swell of his ass a playful smack. Steve had kicked out at his shin, and they ended up a heap on the floor, hard ons obvious, and suddenly Bucky was asking if he’d let him in, and Steve was saying _yes yes yes_ , and his ass was being parted and eaten until he came with his fist muffling the cry wrenched from his throat. Bucky followed with a splash against Steve’s legs not long after.

“Don’t go actin’ like you misplaced it somewhere,” Bucky said. “You threw it at me like the first pitch of the season.”

Steve cackled as Bucky crawled into bed in the space beside him. 

“Guilty,” he said. Bucky made a swipe for the remote and Steve let him have it. Bucky settled himself heavily against Steve’s side and turned the TV off. Steve took a good long look at him because eighty years and a thousand horrors later, he was still the handsomest guy Steve had ever seen. Bucky threw the remote onto the other bed and turned to Steve with his eyebrows raised. 

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“Shoot.”

He nestled himself deeper into the pillows.

“What was it, two and a half years you were here without me? And almost another one before, you know, now. You can’t tell me you didn’t try, with anyone else.”

“Not once I got you back,” Steve said, throwing a leg over Bucky’s. “Sometimes I thought I was a fool to think you’d ever want me again, but I never said I wasn’t a fool. And hey — it was worth it.”

“But you did. Try.”

Steve sighed and shifted on to his back to stare up at the ceiling. Bucky curled against him, head on his shoulder, arm slung over Steve’s chest. Steve settled his right arm carefully around Bucky’s back and laid his palm on his bicep.

“I’d get lonely, and, you know, frustrated.” He felt the curl of Bucky’s smile against the bare skin of his shoulder. “Hey, it wasn’t funny.”

“Sure it wasn’t, pal. Go on.”

“I’d go to a bar for — for guys like us. I’d see what I could do about, you know, a suckjob here or there. It would feel good while it was happening, but I’d have to beat it out of there quick when it was done. I’d hate myself, thinking of you. And in more’n two years I didn’t know how to make it better. So then I’d try to date these women Pepper or Phil would introduce me to, and I just felt like a Grade A jerk. They’d be nice and pretty and smart, but I just don’t think I’m wired like that.” There was a pause. “Maybe Natasha, but I don’t think _she’s_ wired like that.”

Bucky twisted around to look up at him. 

“You think Natasha’s into dames?”

“I don’t know, maybe?”

“Huh.”

“Why?”

“Never thought of it, I guess,” Bucky said. “Maybe make some things easier for her.”

“That’s her business, Buck.”

“Hm.”

Steve had to ask. “What about you?” 

“Eh?”

“Anyone special? In the last ten months?”

Bucky’s laugh was a puff of air across Steve’s chest.

“As if anyone could compare to you, you big lunk.” He thumped his hand once between Steve’s pecs. “And I don’t know if you noticed, but I wasn’t exactly in a place to be cutting the rug. Probably still ain’t.”

“You’re fine,” Steve said into Bucky’s hair. He slung his other arm over Bucky’s body and squeezed him tight. “You’re just right.”

“Now I know you’re nuts,” Bucky said, but he hugged back just as tight.

—

At the Columbus Zoo, Bucky took pictures of a silverback scratching its bum.

“Look Steve,” he said. “He’s doing his impression of you.”

“I learned it by watching you,” Steve said, and Bucky beamed huge.

—

Franklin Park Conservatory had flowers and butterflies, too many to name even if Steve knew what any of them were. Bucky stood in a shaft of light and turned his face up, eyes closed and smile curling his mouth up. A blue butterfly landed in his hair. Steve’s hand itched for a pad and pencil he didn’t have.

He turned around and caught Steve staring. A grin split his face, and Steve didn’t bother to pretend he hadn’t been looking.

—

The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis was a lot smaller than expected.

“Huh.” Bucky stood in front of a framed print of an anus drawing, hand on his hip.

“The timeline’s really interesting?” Steve said. “And over there’s his typewriter?”

“Huh.”

“Let’s just go to the Garfield Park Conservatory. I heard the gardens are sunken.”

“So it goes.”

“Is that a joke?”

“You know, we already saw some gardens today. We don’t have to see every single one between here and Arizona.”

“I just want to make sure you’re having fun.”

Bucky stepped up close enough that Steve could feel his body heat. Around them, other people weren’t even paying attention. Steve’s heart hammered.

“What was it you said to me once?” Bucky murmured, his mouth close to Steve’s. “‘I’d be having fun no matter what we were doing, because I always have fun with you.’”

“When did I say that?”

Bucky took his hand and led him around the glass cases and out of the exhibit.

“While you were keeping me company in my dreams,” he said.

—

In a diner somewhere in Indiana, Steve and Bucky were seated in a booth by an older waitress whose eyes seemed to glaze over when she caught sight of the breadth of Steve’s shoulders. It made Steve blush, but Bucky tangled their legs up together beneath the table and waggled his eyebrows at the waitress, whose name tag declared her ‘Luanne.’

“Stevie here’s a growing boy,” he said. “He’ll have five of everything, doll.”

Luanne raised an eyebrow and snorted. “Is that so?” she said, tapping her notepad with a pen. 

“Don’t mind him,” Steve said. “He was raised by wolves.”

“Not like you, huh?” Luanne said.

“Nah,” Bucky said, “the nuns picked him fresh out of the puppy pile before he could go feral.” He had that smile on, the one where his eyes were soft and his plump lower lip was tucked behind his teeth, and he looked seven different kinds of filthy. Steve got half hard, right there in the booth. 

“Uh huh,” Luanne said, flat. Her eyes were flicking between the two of them. “Well, what can I get you boys?”

Bucky shut his laminated menu and handed it to her. “Tall stack of pancakes, blueberry, bacon, sausage, _and_ ham, please, eggs over easy, bowl of fruit on the side, some yogurt and granola, and hey, did I see lemon meringue pie up there?”

“You sure did, hon,” Luanne said. 

“A slice of that, then, my good woman.”

Luanne’s mouth quirked up when she turned to Steve.

“What about you, handsome?”

“You know, I think I’m gonna have the exact same thing.”

“I like a man with appetite,” Luanne said with a wink. She made a flourish on her notepad and bustled away.

Bucky laughed, the lines around his eyes deepening in a way that made Steve’s whole body want to cleave toward him, gather him into himself and never let go. 

“What do you think, Steve? Luanne might give you the ride of your life.” Bucky trapped one of Steve’s knees between both of his.

“You’re just jealous she likes me better.” Steve scooted onto the edge of his seat and pushed his knee forward so his thigh slid in snug between Bucky’s. Bucky’s eyes widened, just a little, and Steve put on his most innocent face.

“There’s no accounting for taste,” Bucky said. 

A pair of older, trucker-looking guys stood up from the counter and made their way towards Bucky and Steve’s booth. The mirth of a moment ago died abruptly, and Steve tried to disentangle himself from Bucky, but Bucky tightened his knees and wouldn’t let go. His jaw clenched and his brows furrowed, and Steve felt himself straighten and square up in response. 

The two guys came up to the table looking gruff, and the first one looked Bucky dead in the eye and said, “You a vet, son?”

Bucky blinked.

“Uh. Yeah.”

The guy nodded gravely and stuck out his hand. Cautiously, Bucky took it, and they shook.

“I wanted to thank you for your service,” he said. “It’s a hell of a mess over there. A hell of a mess.”

“Um.” 

The guy let his hand go and turned to Steve, visibly taking in all that the serum had wrought. Steve forced himself not to roll his shoulders inward.

“What about you, son? You look as military as anyone I ever seen.”

“Yes, sir,” Steve said. “Special ops.”

The guy shook his hand, too.

“Me and Jack here served in ’Nam,” he said, “’68 to ’73. It was a hell of a mess, too.” He knocked on his leg, which produced a hollow, metallic sound. 

“It’s good to meet you,” Steve said. He glanced at Bucky, whose color had drained but for the high spots of pink infusing his cheeks. He was shaking the Jack fella’s hand in a daze.

“And you boys — everyone treat you all right? None of this Don’t Ask Don’t Tell hoo ha tripping you up anymore?” The man looked so damn earnest about it.

It was Steve’s turn to utter a nonsense syllable, and Bucky managed to get a hold of himself. 

“Our unit had our backs,” he said. “And anyone who didn’t had to answer to them.”

The man chuckled and slapped Bucky on the right shoulder.

“Glad to hear it, son. Nice to see the world changing.”

Steve shook Jack’s hand, and then they were all making their goodbyes. When the other vets were gone, Luanne came by again with water and coffee.

“They been together about a thousand years,” she said with a sigh. “Me, I’m divorced three times and every last one of them’s a prize jackass.” She tutted mournfully at Steve’s muscles. “It’s always the good ones.”

“I’ll have you know he leaves wet towels around,” Bucky said. “And I don’t think he’s done a dish in his life.”

Luanne laughed and patted Bucky on the shoulder as she left. 

“What just happened?” Bucky said when she was out of earshot.

“Seventy years of history,” Steve said. He reached out over the table. “Hold my damn hand, punk.” 

Bucky obliged and leaned in with a sappy look on his face.

“Remember November outside Paris?”

“Dernier and Morita covering for us.” Meanwhile, he and Bucky had been terrified, scrambling for their clothes, for an excuse, for any reason not to look at each other. 

“‘The French, we understand these things,’” Bucky said in an exaggerated accent. “‘You Americans, you are so, what is? Stuck in the mud?’”

“‘What do I care where you stick it?’” Steve quoted back in Morita’s brash tones. “‘Just keep it down so we don’t get Dum Dum in here asking too many questions.’”

Steve put his other hand over Bucky’s and tangled their three hands together in a tight knot. Their smiles faded into faint facsimiles. 

“They had good lives,” Steve said. “They all got on with things. They all got to grow old.”

“Did you see any of them before…”

“Peggy,” Steve said. “She was the last.”

“And?”

“And she was a hell of a woman, Buck. She helped found SHIELD, and she had great grandkids, and she was a looker til the end. I was glad I got to see her, before she went.”

Bucky rubbed Steve’s knuckles with his thumb, over and over.

—

Steve pulled up in front of another shabby motel when they reached St. Louis in the evening, but Bucky’s thighs tightened around his hips and he set his chin on Steve’s shoulder.

“Let’s go somewhere nice,” he said. “Just ’cause we can.”

Which is how they found themselves in the Four Seasons on 2nd St., disheveled as all get out, but getting the star treatment anyway because the clerk at the front desk recognized Steve. 

“Let me pay,” Bucky said when they were presented with the price. “It was my idea.” To his credit, he didn’t appear to be having a heart attack, whereas Steve definitely felt like he might be. 

“I can afford it,” Steve said, mostly to himself. “It’s not a problem.”

“Stevie. We’ll go halves, all right?”

Steve had no idea what they were going to do with a $2000 suite for the night, but he had to admit he’d like to see his best guy in digs he deserved. He nodded.

Bucky turned his flirtiest smile on the clerk, who blushed.

“He can’t help it,” Bucky said, “he’s from before they invented time.” He winked and slid a black credit card across the marble countertop as Steve fumbled for his own. The clerk ran them both and produced keycards and a pair of receipts for them to sign.

“There you are,” he said. “Luxury suite, full amenities. It’s a pleasure to serve you, Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes.”

“Um,” Steve said, and he caught Bucky’s elbow in his ribs. He startled, then flashed a USO-worthy smile. “Thank you—” He checked the name tag. “—Kevin.” 

“Please let us know if we can provide anything for you during your stay,” Kevin said. Steve wondered if his face would break from all the smiling — he’d always felt like his might, when he was slinging war bonds.

“Come on, Steve,” Bucky was saying, hand tangled in Steve’s sleeve. Steve stammered out another thanks to Kevin before letting Bucky drag him off to the elevators. 

The suite was bigger than all the apartments they used to live in put together. Hell, the bed alone looked bigger than some of the cracker boxes where they’d hung their hats. One entire wall was taken up by a window that gave them a view of the Gateway Arch over the Mississippi River, lit up and glittering.

“Jesus,” Bucky muttered, leaning carefully against the glass as if not wishing to smudge it. Steve figured he was entitled to some smudging, what with how much they’d just paid. “Could you ever have imagined this?”

Steve came up behind him and ventured a hand on Bucky’s hip. Bucky leaned back into him, and Steve let his eyes fall shut.

“To be honest,” Steve said, “I’m still really disappointed in the lack of flying cars. It’s 2015. We were supposed to live on Mars by now.”

“Part of me can’t believe what I’m seeing, and another part of me just wants to smash capitalism.”

“Which part of you should I ask about how it feels to drop a thousand bucks on a hotel with your sweetheart?”

Bucky turned around in Steve’s arms and set his groin flush against Steve’s. 

“Three thousand,” he said, and gripped Steve hard around the back when Steve damn near jumped out of his skin. “Don’t be mad; I got us two nights.”

“Bucky—”

“I wanted to,” he said, voice low. His eyes were half-lidded and trained on Steve’s mouth. His hand slid up underneath Steve’s t-shirt and skimmed over the skin of his back. “There’s a lot to do in St. Louis, and we’re in no hurry, right? We can rough it for the rest of the trip if you really want, but let me have this, okay?”

“We don’t have to rough it,” Steve grumbled. He felt more and more like a heel, denying Bucky the luxuries they could afford now, just because he was accustomed to frugality. He pulled Bucky in and tucked his face into his neck. 

“Hey,” Bucky said, and pulled away. “Did you bring your pod thing?”

“My what?”

“The music thing, peas in a pod.”

“Oh. Yeah. Lemme find it.”

Steve went over to where someone had dropped off their saddlebags and rummaged through his until he found his iPod. He handed it to Bucky and Bucky went over to the entertainment center, shucking off his jacket as he went. Steve padded after him and watched him flick through and then set it in a dock. He hit some buttons and the room swelled with the voice of Billie Holiday. A new song — rather, a song she recorded after Steve’s time — but one he had listened to on a loop for days when he first heard it. Trust Bucky to pick that one. Bucky always knew. He held his arm out, and he looked so damn hopeful, as if there were any chance Steve might refuse him.

“Took you long enough to ask, punk,” Steve said, slotting his body in against Bucky’s. He let Bucky take the lead; he was the expert, after all. 

“I was waiting for my moment,” he said. He set a swaying, easy rhythm that was slower than the tempo of the song. 

“You smell like a construction site,” Steve told him.

“It’s romantic.”

“Shush.”

Bucky didn’t shush. “ _You saw me standing alone,_ ” he sang softly, tunelessly into Steve’s ear. “ _Without a dream in my heart. Without a love of my own_.”

Steve clasped Bucky to himself tighter and let his body rock, gentle and slow, as Billie crooned around them, and all of St. Louis glimmered just on the other side of the glass.

—

Steve took the second shower this time. He deliberated on the merits of a fluffy towel versus those of a fluffy robe. He wiped the fog away from the mirror and shrugged into a robe. He let it hang open and almost full-on giggled at the dangle of his penis. He tied it shut and looked like someone’s grumpy grandpa. He hung the robe back up and tied a towel around his hips. He turned around and found his bum filled out the back pretty good. The slit flashed a bit too much thigh to be proper.

Perfect. 

He tousled his wet hair with his hands, squared his shoulders, and nodded at himself in the mirror. He left the bathroom and crossed the foot of the bed to reach his saddlebag. He bent over and dug through it for longer than was strictly necessary. On the bed, Bucky, clad in a t-shirt and underwear, snorted and shifted to a kneeling position.

“That’s your move?” he said. “Still?”

Steve peeked over his shoulder and failed spectacularly at willing himself not to flush. 

“If it ain’t broke…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky said. “C’mere, dollface.”

Steve stood and tried to act put out about the pet name, but the effect was ruined by the way his dick was hardening beneath the terrycloth. He let Bucky pull him to his knees on the mattress and they knelt there, chest to chest. Bucky kept his eyes on Steve’s as he undid the knot of Steve’s towel and let it fall away. Steve’s breath shuddered out of him, but he cupped Bucky’s whisker-rough jaw and rubbed his thumbs over his cheekbones. 

“Hi,” he said.

“Stevie,” Bucky said, voice cracking. His eyes were sea-deep, churning blue and green. His lush mouth parted, and the tip of his tongue flickered out to wet his lips. Steve leaned in and touched his lips to Bucky’s, chased that tongue with his own. Bucky groaned, a vibration through Steve’s chest, and opened his mouth to let him in. Steve could feel the sweep of Bucky’s lashes against his cheek when he closed his eyes. Bucky’s hand crept around the fullest curve of Steve’s ass, and he held him steady as he ground his erection into Steve’s. They kissed for a long time, in hot draws of breath and tongue, in sucking nips and reverent exploration. It had been far, far too long without this. Kissing Bucky felt like all the missing bits of Steve’s life slotting into place.

Steve swept his hands down Bucky’s neck and over his shoulders. At the touch of his palm over the left, however, Bucky shrugged away and came at Steve’s mouth harder. Steve eased him off, and when he opened his eyes he found Bucky dazed, mouth swollen, chest heaving, wet cock straining at the cotton of his boxer-briefs. 

“Gonna need that shirt off,” Steve said. His voice came out like a roll of thunder. 

“Um. Can we not?”

“Buck. I’ve seen your stump. You never wear your prosthetic.”

“Yeah, but it’s different when there’s sex.”

“I will jerk off on that thing if you’re not careful.”

That startled a laugh out of him, and his eyes went wide, but damned if he didn’t look a little excited at the prospect. “Oh my God, Steve.” 

“Please, Buck. I want to feel all of you.” Steve grasped at the hem of the t-shirt, but he held steady and met Bucky’s eyes. Bucky swallowed, but he raised his arm and his stump and Steve skimmed the shirt off, leaving his hair in disarray. Bucky’s gaze dropped, but Steve crowded against him and smoothed his hair out. He passed his lips over Bucky’s forehead, and he felt Bucky’s breath over his collarbone. Bucky’s arm came up to grip Steve around the back. Steve ran one hand down the stump, over the Soviet machinery at its core, but he didn’t linger. He stroked down Bucky’s side until he landed on a hip to squeeze, and Bucky nosed against his face until they were kissing again, deep and slow. 

Steve bore him down into the mattress and sucked a trail of kisses down his chest and stomach. Bucky tangled his fingers in Steve’s hair and petted it, worshipful. When he got to Bucky’s underwear, he flicked his eyes up as he closed his mouth over the head of Bucky’s cock through the fabric, and he was rewarded with a choked off moan and Bucky’s eyes fluttering shut without his volition. He budged Bucky’s hips up so he could pull the underwear off, and then he sealed his mouth over Bucky’s cock. His eyes rolled back in his head at the taste of it, at the velvet-snug fit against the roof of his mouth, at the smell of Bucky’s arousal. Bucky let go of his hair, and when Steve pushed his tongue under Bucky’s foreskin, he heard the thud of Bucky’s fist against the mattress, felt the coil and bunch of tension in Bucky’s thighs. He worked up a lot of saliva and set a vigorous rhythm that had Bucky’s toes curling and the ache in his own ass pounding. When Bucky’s breath began to hitch, Steve shoved a hand down behind his own balls to rub at his hole. Above him, Bucky swore and sat up to slap his hand away, and then Bucky’s fingers were there, spit-slick and firm around the rim of his ass. Steve groaned around the cock in his mouth and shoved back into the contact.

“God, I almost forgot how much you loved this,” Bucky said. “How could I forget that, when you look so gorgeous?”

Steve only hummed in response, but Bucky’s hand came up to ease his head away, and then he was being borne down face first into the bedding. Bucky insinuated himself between Steve’s legs and settled in. His hand passed over Steve’s ass, and then his lips, and then he spread one cheek away from the other and dropped a kiss on his hole. Steve put both his hands over the back of his head and damn near sobbed into the pillows. Bucky licked him, firm but gentle, and it was so good it almost hurt. Steve had almost forgotten, too. He had almost forgotten what it was like to have the most sensitive part of himself lavished with attention, treated with a filthy sort of reverence, filled up and sucked on and soothed with a wicked tongue. He had forgotten what Bucky felt like, in his arms and in his bed. He yanked at his hair and tried not to weep. 

“Stevie?”

“Don’t stop.”

“You okay?”

“Please, Buck. Please don’t stop, I need it. I need you.” He tilted his hips up in invitation. Bucky braced his stump on Steve’s hips, palmed greedily at one cheek of his ass, and sighed back into the crack, where he laved and flicked in alternating sweeps of his tongue. When he began to suck and push his tongue inside, Steve thrust back into his face and bit down on the scream that wanted to burst from his throat.

And then, Bucky moved away, and he turned Steve over so he was on his back.

“Hold your legs up,” he said, voice rough, mouth red. “I wanna see you, yeah?”

Steve spread himself with hands behind his knees, ass canted up. Bucky looked predatory and Steve’s asshole clenched at the attention. Bucky got down on his stomach, snaked his arm around Steve’s thigh, and grasped his cock. Steve gasped, back arching, as Bucky wriggled his tongue inside him and pumped his cock at the same time. 

“Oh fuck,” he whispered, quiet by habit. “Oh fuck, Bucky, I’m gonna—”

Bucky sucked hard at his asshole and quickened the pace of his hand on Steve’s cock, and with a smothered gasp, Steve came soaring, starbursts dappling his vision. His body shook and twitched in the aftermath, legs falling akimbo from his hands. Bucky rose up and slung Steve’s right leg over his left shoulder and pushed two fingers into Steve’s ass to press against his prostate. Steve couldn’t help it — he let out a ragged shout, and the tendrils of his fading orgasm lashed out again, sending sparks up his core and producing one more glob of semen to plop onto his stomach. 

“Good boy,” Bucky muttered. “God, you’re such a good fucking boy, Stevie.”

“Buck,” Steve whispered. All his nerves felt the best kind of blasted.

“Gonna fuck you,”

“Oh, God, _yeah_.” Steve twisted enough to grab the bottle of lube he’d brought, shoved thoughtfully under a pillow, and rolled it Bucky’s way. Bucky put a generous amount in Steve and slathered himself good before lining up, meeting Steve’s eyes, and pushing inside. Steve bore down and Bucky slid all the way in, his mouth falling open, his eyes sinking shut. “God,” Steve said, “ _Bucky._ ”

Bucky propped himself up, hand next to Steve’s head, and set his forehead against Steve’s. Steve locked his legs around Bucky’s hips and cradled Bucky’s face in both his hands. Bucky thrust into him in steady circles, lips against Steve’s, the air between them humid and sultry.

“Y’feel so good, Stevie,” he said, soft.

“I never though I’d have this again,” Steve said. “I’m so glad, Bucky. I’m so damn happy.”

Bucky shuddered and thrust faster. He kissed Steve, a searing, claiming kiss, and hitched Steve’s legs up higher. Steve tangled his hands in his hair and wouldn’t let go. When his rhythm began to stutter, he wrenched away and arched his back, gasping. Steve scratched down through his chest hair and caught on the hard points of his nipples. Bucky keened and fucked into Steve’s body more desperately. Steve pushed himself up, tightened his legs around Bucky’s back, and set his mouth against the pulse point in Bucky’s neck.

“Come in me, Buck,” he whispered. “Wanna feel you.”

Bucky gripped Steve by the back of the neck and crushed their lips together. He plundered Steve’s mouth and bit his lower lip as he pushed himself as far inside Steve as he could go. He went still for a long moment and then shuddered, sliding his face into Steve’s neck. Steve pulled him down to lie on him, mess on his stomach forgotten, and rubbed his hands over Bucky’s back in long, soothing strokes. He kissed the side of his face, his temple, his eye. He whispered nothing in particular at him, quiet devotions. Bucky slumped into him, and his cock slipped from Steve’s body. They lay together, limbs tangled, panting. Eventually Steve cracked an eye and turned his head to find Bucky looking at him through slitted eyelids, mouth curled up in contentment. Bucky laid his hand on the side of Steve’s face.

“Anyone ever tell you what a dirty fucker you are?”

“I learned it by watching you.”

“Man, I can’t hold a candle to you.” Bucky rubbed his thumb over Steve’s lips. Steve, half drunk on sex and love, caught the pad of his thumb between his teeth and swiped his tongue over it. “What would all your fans think,” Bucky said, voice like gravel, “if they could see you beg for my come in your ass?”

Steve shifted to his side and curled in close enough to touch the tip of his nose to Bucky’s. Bucky’s thumb continued its journey over the lines of Steve’s face.

“I like what I like,” Steve said, shrugging.

“I like what you like, too.” The thumb passed over the bump in Steve’s nose, and Bucky’s eyes crinkled with a smile. “Remember this? The first time.”

“Tim Lafferty, 1932.”

“He came at you with an empty milk bottle.”

“But you got him in the end,” Steve said. “My hero.”

“I wanted you, even then.”

“Fourteen and covered in blood?”

“Spittin’ mad and fierce as a lion,” Bucky said. He licked his lips. “I could have swallowed you whole and it still wouldn’t have been enough.”

Steve wrapped a hand round the back of his head and pulled him in for a rough kiss. He didn’t know how he got to be so lucky, but he didn’t want to waste another second of it hemming and hawing. It wouldn’t take much for either of them to get hard again, and Steve fully intended to take advantage of that fact.

His stomach rumbled. Loudly.

Bucky pulled back and blinked at him.

“Um,” Steve said.

“I guess we haven’t eaten since before Illinois.”

“Does the Four Seasons do room service?”

“I think the more important question is if they mind whether we’re naked when they do, because I really cannot be putting on clothes right now.”

“That _is_ an important question.”

“Don’t think I could stomach covering you up, either,” Bucky said, trailing his fingers lightly over Steve’s abs. “Naked except for love bites and jizz is definitely your best look.”

It tickled, so Steve caught Bucky’s hand in his and pulled it up to kiss each fingertip. 

“We’ll call in a minute,” he said. He kept on looking into Bucky’s eyes. Bucky was right — he’d never be able to get enough.

—

The Missouri Botanical Gardens did not appear, to Steve, significantly different from any other botanical gardens they visited. That is — they were beautiful, and fresh, and smelt of rich earth and new grass and occasionally pungent flowers. It was gorgeous, of course it was, but so were the others.

He didn’t say anything, though. He just watched Bucky meander the trails at a slow pace, admiring every spill of colorful petals. Steve thought Bucky might have liked hydrangeas best, but it didn’t seem pressing enough a question to ask.

It had not escaped Steve’s notice, however, that in a garden, even in the middle of the country, no one minded when a big guy in pressed khakis took a scruffy-looking fella’s only hand in his and they looked at each other like the sun rose out of each other’s butts. Steve could appreciate that much, if nothing else.

—

The St. Louis Art Museum was a different story. Steve lost hours in there, and aside from the odd comment here or there, Bucky was quiet as he trailed around after him. Steve leaned in to inspect lines and shadows and brush strokes. There were sculptures and installations and digital art, too. He had been to MOMA back in New York, of course, and a million little galleries around the city, and it still never quenched him. He had missed out on more than seventy years of progression and innovation. He had left art behind when Erskine gave him his 1A, and its absence yawned inside him. Sometimes, it was easy enough to shove away the sensation, but other times, like when he was in a museum, or when he saw an artist busking caricatures on the street, or even when he got little kids’ drawings in fan mail, it was harder to forget there was something missing in him.

When he got to the end of the collections and it was time to go into the gift store, Bucky was nowhere to be found. Steve looked around the foyer and even called out his name in the men’s, but he wasn’t there. His heart thudded hard against his ribs and he jogged out of the building, only to see Bucky leaning against the wall like James Dean, a gift bag slung in his elbow and a cigarette dangling from his lips, tracing a tendril of smoke into the air.

“Hey, you scared me,” Steve said.

“I texted you,” Bucky said. He plucked the cigarette from his lips.

“Oh.”

“It didn’t even occur to you to check.”

“Sorry.”

Bucky sighed and shuffled to hand Steve the bag even with a cigarette in hand.

“Got you something,” he said. “We can return it, if it’s not right, or whatever.”

“Bucky…”

“Just open it, punk.”

Steve’s heart swelled and he darted in to lay a tiny kiss on Bucky’s lips. Bucky ducked away and kicked lightly at Steve’s boot, a shy smile curving his lips. 

Steve opened the bag and peered inside. Inside was a drawing pad and a wooden case of seventy-two Faber-Castell colored pencils. All Steve had at home were some #2s for schoolchildren. A lump rose in his throat.

“Buck…”

“Is it the right thing?”

“Bucky, this is…too nice. I can’t.” It must have cost $300. 

“You can, and you will,” Bucky said. “Just — think about it, okay?”

Steve glanced up, and Bucky looked serious with his frown lines and the furrow in his brow.

“Think about what?”

“You know what,” Bucky said. He took a drag of his cigarette and pitched it to the ground to snuff out with his boot. He linked his arm in with Steve’s and led them back around to the parking lot.

—

They found a secluded spot away from other tourists to have a dinner picnic at Cahokia Mounds. The sky was turning purple in the twilight, and Steve was lying on his back watching the colors churn. Bucky sat beside him, arm around his knees, chin propped up. Steve had pushed his hand up Bucky’s shirt, and he spread his fingers over the small of Bucky’s back. He could feel how Bucky’s body expanded and contracted with each breath.

“You ever think about how much we don’t know?” Bucky said.

“As in what SHIELD hides from us, or…”

“I mean, I didn’t know this place existed. I didn’t know the people who lived here were so advanced. I didn’t know how many people in the world were descended from Genghis Khan. I didn’t know there was water on Mars. I didn’t know how small we were, in the scheme of things. How huge our star system is, and then how small. How many billions of star systems just like ours are out there. How can we think we know anything, when you learn all that?”

“I think some things are too big to think about,” Steve said. “We couldn’t possibly conceive of the universe, so we just… don’t.”

“I didn’t even know what we did to — to people like Morita during the war until I read it in a book two months ago.”

The moment stretched heavy between them. It was as silent as the outdoors got — the rustle of a breeze in the trees, the calls of distant birds. Breath. 

“I got no answers, Buck,” Steve said. “Especially not for that.”

“I know. I’m not asking for any. Just—” He flapped his hand out at the mounds and the sky and the world at large. “It’s hard to know what to do, sometimes.”

Steve sat up and molded himself around Bucky’s back, arms winding around his waist. Bucky leaned into him, an anchored weight Steve found comforting. He tucked his face into Bucky’s neck and breathed him deep.

“Just your best,” he said. “At whatever it is you find yourself doing.”

“I guess that’s all there is.”

The sky was shot with red. Bucky smelled like warm skin and autumn wind and hotel shampoo.

“Hey Bucky?”

“Hm.”

“I love you.”

Bucky clasped his hand tight over Steve’s on his stomach and leaned his head back against Steve’s shoulder. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You got bad taste, everyone knows.”

—

That night, the Teach This Mook How to Dance playlist boasted Coltrane, Miles Davis, Jr., Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Ella, Billie, and Louis. Bucky twirled Steve around and let himself be dipped and held him close and murmured into his ear and laughed when Steve trampled his feet and kissed away all his apologies.

Steve didn’t think he’d ever been so happy in his life.

—

Missouri never seemed to end. It was flat, and there was nothing to punctuate the drive but the odd diner or gas station. A lot of billboards demanded that they repent or face the fires of hell. And then:

**ADULT SHOP NEXT EXIT TRUCKERS WELCOME**

Bucky sniggered into his ear and then shouted at him over the whip of the wind.

“Come on, Steve-o,” he said. “We gotta.”

So Steve pulled off, and into the shameless adult emporium they went. They were greeted with wall upon wall of things to insert inside oneself. Steve had a pretty straightforward one back at the brownstone, because he had needs, but at least he had gotten it on the internet and didn’t have to die of embarrassment in front of a store clerk for it. 

Bucky slapped his back.

“Deep breath, Steve,” he said, “and pick a dildo.”

“I’m not _picking a dildo,_ ” Steve hissed. Bucky only cackled and held up something called ‘The Fist’ to wave at him. “NO,” Steve said. 

“Okay, we’ll work up to that.”

“No we won’t!” Steve’s voice was raised, and the words reverberated between the walls. 

Bucky raised his eyebrows at him as if to say _really, Steve?_ Steve looked around — apparently early afternoon was not rush hour at the sex shop, and the only other people there were two clerks with their hair dyed unnatural colors, and they were too busy talking to each other to pay attention to Bucky and Steve. Steve hunched in on himself.

“Sorry,” he said. Bucky just rolled his eyes and wandered down the next aisle. Steve averted his eyes from fluffy handcuffs and scanty lingerie to trail after him.

“Here we go,” Bucky said, stopping in front of a wall of anal plugs and planting his fist on his hip. “What size is about your speed, do you think?”

“I don’t — I mean, I’m having fun just you and me, aren’t you?”

Bucky turned his head to peer at him, and the little smile he favored him with seemed sweet instead of filthy. Steve shoved his hands into his pockets.

“’Course I am,” Bucky said. “We’re the main course, always. Consider this… a little side dish for our meal. And Steve, we can’t stop at a fine national treasure like this and not have anything to show for it.” His eyes were big and pretty, and he worried his bottom lip between his teeth just a bit. Steve could feel himself cracking, and he decided to stop fighting it. He sighed and turned his head back to the wall of marital aids.

“Okay, well. I guess size depends on usage? Is this for foreplay, or are you planning on plugging me up so your come can’t leak out after you’re done with me?”

Bucky coughed a bit, and Steve glanced at him sidelong. His color was high and his breath was ragged.

“Oh fuck, Steve, don’t _say_ shit like that, I’m gonna have a heart attack.”

“We’re in a sex shop picking out an item to put in my bum, and I can’t talk?”

“Mercy, Steve, have mercy on me.” Bucky curled his hand over the back of Steve’s neck and rocked up to plant a kiss on his cheek. “I’m ninety-eight years old.” Steve ducked in for a kiss that went on a little too long. When Bucky finally peeled himself off, they were both panting and sporting inappropriate erections. Bucky leaned in too close and whispered, “I want you to wear it on the ride.”

Steve stepped back, and he felt his face pinch into incredulity.

“Are you kidding?” 

Bucky shook his head, and he went pink in the face, eyes heavy-lidded. The tip of his tongue swept out over his lower lip.

“Can you imagine?” he said, crowding into Steve’s space. “A nice one of these babies up your ass as we’re going along seventy miles an hour on the bike. The vibration would be unbelievable, and every bump in the road would hit that spot inside you…”

Steve suddenly found it difficult to swallow.

“We’d die in a fiery crash,” he said faintly, but he knew as well as Bucky did that his resolve was crumbling even as his cock raged against his zipper.

“Pick one out, Steve,” Bucky said, breath hot on Steve’s mouth. 

“Um.”

“Come on. Not too big, not too small, from over here in the ‘wearables’ section.”

Steve grabbed a red one that seemed reasonable — not quite as thick as Bucky’s penis, but nothing to scoff at, with a slim, longish stem. It promised comfort and enjoyment, but all Steve could think about was the sudden pounding of blood to his asshole. 

At the counter, he paid for the plug and a tiny packet of lubricant Bucky threw in. The clerks didn’t even blink when Bucky plastered himself to Steve’s side and asked where the rest room was.

“Through the DVD room and to the right,” the one with blue hair said.

“Just clean up after yourselves,” the one with pink hair said.

Steve and Bucky made some promises and then beat it to the restrooms, which boasted surprisingly clean and roomy stalls.

“Help me with this thing,” Bucky said between teeth clenched on the plastic packaging. Steve yanked it away from him and tore it open as Bucky made short work of Steve’s fly and jerked his pants and underwear down around his thighs. He slapped Steve’s hip and Steve turned around and bent over. “Fuck,” he heard Bucky mutter, and then he was gone and the sink was running. Steve laid his forehead against a wall with more force than was quite called for. 

“Buck.”

“Hold your horses, Rogers.”

He came back and knelt behind him to stick his tongue in Steve’s ass without ceremony. Steve stifled the bellow that threatened to escape him with a fist in his mouth, but before he could open his eyes again, Bucky was standing and prodding a single slick finger inside him. He pressed firmly along the sleeve of his ass, and Steve whimpered. There was fumbling, and then the blunt, tapered end of the plug snubbed against his asshole. Steve exhaled and pushed down, and Bucky slid it gently inside until the thickest part of the bulb popped through and his asshole clenched around the stem.

“God,” Bucky breathed. He pulled on it just a little, just for the thick end to peek out again, and then slid it back in. Steve pounded at the wall with his free hand and sunk his teeth into his own fingers to keep from wailing. Behind his closed eyes, a cascade of stars fell.

Behind him, Bucky stood up and pulled at Steve’s hip so he would, too. Steve turned around and found Bucky’s eyes dark and half-lidded, his color high, a light sheen of sweat springing up along his hairline.

“How’s that?” Bucky said, voice husky. “Do up your pants and walk around a little.”

“Buck…”

“You gotta make sure it’s all right before we get on the bike, Steve.”

Steve obeyed, shoving his hard on into one pant leg and closing his fly over it. He took a few jerky steps, and he had to force himself not to groan aloud at the stretch and shift of the plug inside him. 

“Okay?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah,” Steve said, breathless. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Good,” Bucky said. “That’s — yeah. Lemme wash this off and we can go.”

“Do you—”

“What?”

Steve cleared his throat. “Want me to suck you?”

Bucky’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he licked his lips once before closing his mouth again. He shook his head minutely, but he came in for a kiss that Steve wanted to chase forever.

“Thanks, doll,” he said. “But let’s save it, yeah?” He turned to wash his hand. Steve met his eyes in the mirror, and his smile was free of shadows.

—

Steve lasted barely twenty minutes. The weight and fullness of the plug was maddening, and coupled with the buzz of the bike between his legs, he thought his balls might burst right there on the I-44. Bucky didn’t help, hand stroking the bare skin of Steve’s stomach, hips grinding his hard on into the crack of Steve’s ass. They passed a sign that said REST STOP 1 MILE and Steve sped up.

“In a hurry, sailor?”

“You bet your ass I am, jerk.”

There were _people_ at the rest stop, milling around and getting snacks and stretching their legs, but Steve could barely think past the ache in his ass that could only be soothed by a vigorous application of cock. He dragged Bucky into the building and tried the door to the family restroom, which was blessedly open. He pushed Bucky inside and locked the door behind himself. Bucky stumbled and laughed, eyes already gone dark and dazed. Steve hauled him up to kiss him like he could eat him alive. 

“You better fuck me good, Barnes,” he growled into his mouth, and Bucky shoved him away only to spin him around and bend him over the counter. Steve scrambled to get his pants open, and Bucky pulled them down roughly until they tangled around his knees and they both gave up. Bucky grasped the base of the plug and met Steve’s eyes in the mirror. He raised his eyebrows, Steve nodded, and Bucky slid the plug out slow and steady. Steve’s eyes fluttered shut and he choked back a moan.

“You be good and quiet, now,” Bucky said, setting the plug in the sink. “Can’t have all those people out there knowing you’re in here getting fucked.”

“You’re killing me, Buck, I’m gonna die.”

“Hush up.” He produced the little packet of lube from his pocket and slathered himself with it. Steve rocked his ass back and made an impatient sound. He gripped the base of his cock in one hand and braced himself against the mirror with the other. And then, finally, Bucky thrust the entire length of his cock inside him on the first go. Steve threw his head back and opened his mouth wide but no sound came out.

Bucky gripped Steve by the hip and eased out only to shove inside again hard, clipping his prostate along the way. Steve sealed his mouth shut but forced his eyes open so he could look at Bucky in the mirror. Hair had escaped his pony tail and flew all around him with the force of his fuck, and Steve’s vision blurred as he arched his back to get Bucky in deeper and harder. Bucky made eye contact in the mirror and _smiled_ at him, leering and dirty, but shining, too, like the only light Steve had ever known. Bucky fucked him faster, and Steve’s eyelids failed him and squeezed shut. He jerked his cock hard, but Bucky batted it away.

“Come on my cock, Steve,” he said, low. “Come on.”

Steve gasped and shoved back into Bucky’s cock. Bucky gripped him by the thickest part of his gluteus maximus and snapped his hips hard. Steve felt claimed and open and utterly owned, and then Bucky leaned down to scrape his teeth down the skin between his shoulder blades and Steve seized up and blasted come all over the floor.

“God,” Bucky was saying under his breath, “God, yeah, you beautiful _fuck_ , Steve, Stevie, fuck.”

Bucky shook as he emptied himself inside Steve, and Steve was so wrung out his legs gave and he thought he would melt right into the floor, but Bucky was there. Bucky held him up.

They lay there panting before finally giving up all pretenses of the vertical, and they sank to the floor in a heap. Steve buried his face in Bucky’s lap while Bucky stroked lazily over his back, tracing the constellation of moles that seemed to fascinate him so much. 

“We gotta go before someone notices,” Steve said, muffled.

“Give it a minute,” Bucky said. “It’ll keep.”

Their minute passed, and Bucky cleaned Steve up with gentle dabs of toilet paper. He made Steve push out his come, and Steve didn’t even have it in him to be embarrassed about it. He knelt and wiped away Steve’s leavings while Steve rose on shaky legs to do up his pants and wash the anal plug in the sink. Bucky got up, and their eyes met in the mirror again. Bucky bit his lip and smiled, and Steve smiled back.

—

In Oklahoma City, they settled on a comfortable economy hotel, and they got four pizzas delivered to the room for dinner.

Steve lay on his stomach, almost through the pizza loaded with every meat known to mankind and flicking through his phone with the only clean finger he had.

“Here,” he said. “Myriad Botanical Garden. Also the American Banjo museum? Anyway, we can hit those before heading out again. Next stop: Albuquerque.”

Bucky was propped up against the headboard in a nest of pillows, his legs outstretched and his ankles crossed under Steve’s arm. His pizzas were demolished in two open boxes on either side of him.

“So, I need to tell you something.” 

Steve looked up. “Uh oh,” he said.

“Don’t be mad.”

Steve did a half-roll onto his side so he could fix Bucky with a quizzical eyebrow.

“What?” 

“I don’t actually like flowers that much.”

Steve stared at him. “What.”

Bucky put down the slice of pizza he was holding and wiped his hand and face with a napkin.

“They’re nice and all, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “But they’re not my passion in life, or whatever you and Natasha have imagined between you.”

Steve stared some more.

“Steve.”

“But — the flower shop.”

“I was knocking around your place making a damn nuisance of myself,” Bucky said. “How many times did I set fire to your kitchen?”

“I didn’t mind.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Well, I _did_ ,” he said. “And quit lying, so did you. I was looking for work, and they were hiring. Time was, you’d have taken that for me doing what I needed to do instead of suddenly thinking it was my vocation or something. How many odd jobs have we had between us, huh?”

“It was a different time. And — and you don’t have to work, now. Our ends all meet, neat and tidy, with, um, string leftover. You can’t fault me for thinking it was something you wanted.”

“It _was_ something I wanted,” Bucky said. “I wanted to contribute. I wanted to be useful. Working at Sherman Brothers’ was how I got that.”

Steve rolled into a sitting position and straightened his back.

“So…you don’t want to devote your life to flowers.”

Bucky laughed. “Naw,” he said. He stacked his pizza boxes and dropped them onto the floor.

“Are you telling me I spent hours and hours in botanical gardens the last few days for nothing?”

“I don’t know, pal, some of them were kinda nice.” He caught Steve around the hips with his legs. “I liked seeing you in them, ’cause you’re a looker and all.”

Steve wiped his hands and face and crawled up Bucky’s body to look him in the eye up close.

“You liked holding my hand in front of everyone.”

“Bonus.”

“You liked making me think you loved flowers.”

“It was fun for a little while, I admit,” Bucky said, carding his fingers through Steve’s hair. “But then you started looking like a waterlogged kitten and I had to put you out of your misery.”

“I’m not a kitten,” Steve said. 

“A powerful jungle cat, then,” Bucky said, cheeky smile firmly in place. “Drenched with rain.”

“Your metaphor is falling apart.”

“I like kitten Steve and I like panther Steve.” Bucky’s hand trailed down and splayed over his heart. “As long as you’re in there, I’m along for the ride.”

Steve kissed him and settled against his side. He tangled their hands together and laid his head on a strong shoulder.

“So, not flowers, then,” Steve said.

“Nope.”

“What did you want to be when you were a kid? When there wasn’t a war on, and you didn’t have think about anything but what you wanted to be when you grew up.”

“I never thought like that, Steve,” Bucky said. “You been knocking around the 21st century for too long. That line of thinking’s a luxury for the baby boomers and all their happy little spawn. _What do you want to be when you grow up_.” He scoffed.

“You never dreamed of what you’d do someday?” Steve said. “I did. I was gonna be a great comic book artist.”

Bucky’s mouth tilted in a crooked smile. “I know you were,” he said. “And I believed it.”

“You’re saying you had nothing like that for yourself at all?” Steve said.

Bucky was quiet for a long moment before he took an audible breath and opened his mouth. “I thought about going into welding because the money was better than the docks, but you had to go through a special course and every time I saved up enough there’d be some emergency and I’d blow it all. And then the war came, and turns out I was real good with a long range rifle so that was me set for life.”

Silence bloomed between them, thick and tense. 

“Jesus, Buck,” Steve said. “If I’d known, I would have tried not to—”

“Don’t,” Bucky said sharply. “You didn’t ruin my welding dreams being sick, Steve. Don’t you ever sit there and imply that I would hold some kind of hundred-year grudge against you for doing everything I could to keep you alive, because I can and I will cut you down.”

Steve’s innards were threatening to quake clear out of his skin, but Bucky was holding fast to his hands and Steve promised himself he wouldn’t let go.

“Maybe you could weld now? We got the money.”

“It was the only good thing I ever did,” Bucky said abruptly, turning his head to face him. His eyes were a clear and startling blue. “Keeping you alive.”

“Bucky—”

“So I did it after all,” Bucky said. “I did the only thing that ever mattered to me, the only thing I could ever think was my calling, and I’m damn well proud of it. That 21st century enough for you? Everyone’s proud of themselves?”

“I’m proud of you,” Steve said vehemently, and a muscle in Bucky’s jaw ticked. His eyes shone a clear and startling blue. “I always been proud of you, whether you were out shining shoes or in setting my damn kitchen on fire. Always have been, always will be, and there’s no stunt you can pull that will make it go away.”

“Steve.” Bucky’s voice quivered. Bucky’s voice _never_ quivered — Bucky was the one who was strong and hale and would take care of everything that went haywire. Steve pulled him roughly to his chest and closed his arms around him, tight enough to grind his ribs together, tight enough to steal his breath, tight enough to prove he was still there inside, too.

—

They got an early start in the morning, heading dead west on the I-40. As soon as they crossed from Oklahoma to Texas, they were treated to the flashing lights of a state trooper pulling them over.

Steve reached for his license and registration as Bucky scooted backwards to put some space between them. The cop strolled on up to them and fixed Steve with an unimpressed look. Or Steve assumed he did — he had sunglasses on. Steve pasted on his chorus girl grin, the crowd pleaser. Behind him, Bucky smothered a snort, and Steve just barely refrained from throwing an elbow back into his ribs.

“You know why I pulled you boys over?” the cop said. 

“No, sir,” Steve said. “How can I help you?”

The cop took the documents and inspected them. Steve’s “I just knocked out Hitler” smile started to feel brittle as the moment dragged on, the sun hot on the back of his neck, but he was an old hand at this. He could keep that look on his face for hours if he had to. 

“Where you boys headed?” the cop asked, looking at Bucky. 

“Albuquerque today, sir,” he said. “And on to the Grand Canyon after that.”

“And where you coming from?”

“Brooklyn,” Bucky said. He swallowed. “Sir.”

The cop handed Steve his papers back and walked a slow circle around the motorcycle, assessing. He stopped on Bucky’s right side. Steve’s hackles were up, and he had to push down the thing inside him that wanted to eliminate the threat to his best guy.

“And before that?” the cop asked Bucky.

“Huh? I mean, excuse me, sir? I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I mean, son, did you lose that arm in combat?”

Steve bowed his head and dropped the smile. 

“Oh,” he heard Bucky say. “Yeah. I was with the 107th.”

“I had a son about your age,” the cop said. “He was in Iraq. Got hit by an IED. Broke his mother’s heart.”

Bucky paused a moment too long before he said, quietly, “I’m really sorry to hear that, sir. You have my condolences, truly.”

“Reckon you’ve lost people too.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And it never gets easier.”

“No, it does not.” 

“Is the mission worth it?”

“Not really, sir, no.”

In his peripheral vision, Steve could see the cop nodding. After a long moment he stood up straight again and said to Steve, “In the state of Texas, we have helmet laws. I can escort you to an establishment that sells helmets so you don’t get pulled over again. Does that sound good to you boys?”

“Yes, sir,” Steve said, and Bucky echoed him half a second later and added in a word of thanks as well. 

The cop pushed his sunglasses up and nodded. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.” He leaned in towards Bucky one more time. “Son, tell your friend to wipe that dumb grin off his face. He looks like he wants someone to steal his wallet.”

Bucky laughed. “Will do, sir. Fair warning: he never listens.”

—

They took another budget hotel room in Albuquerque. Before dawn, Steve woke Bucky up and told him he had a surprise.

“What,” he croaked, face rumpled with pillow creases and general morning grumpiness.

“If I tell you, it won’t be a surprise.”

“That’s the worst, Steve,” Bucky said. “You’re the worst.”

“Come on.” Steve smacked Bucky’s bare ass and earned himself a yelp. “You’ll like it, I promise.”

An hour later, they were floating over the city of Albuquerque in a private hot air balloon. They were going to watch the sun rise over the Rio Grande Valley. The pilot was an older woman who answered questions but also stared off into the distance when they weren’t speaking to her and gave them the illusion of privacy. 

Bucky leaned against the wall of the basket, hand dangling outside of it as he beheld the vista before him. Steve wanted to look — there was the river, and the color of the sky dappled with clouds, and all the flora and the cityscape, too — but all he could see was Bucky, eyes wide and lips parted, hair framing his face just so. Steve could be handed the world and he’d still rather make time for James Buchanan Barnes. 

It was surprisingly silent, up above civilization.

“What’s the verdict?” Steve said. “You like your surprise?”

“It’s perfect,” Bucky whispered. “It’s…like nothing I ever thought to want, and now I have it. Thanks for being a pain in the ass this morning, Steve.”

Steve chuckled and came up behind him to set his chin on his shoulder and wrap his arms around his waist.

“Anytime, champ,” he said. “Isn’t this better than the botanical gardens?”

“Only a very little bit.”

“Uh huh.”

They passed over land and water, drinking in the quiet.

—

They made it to Grand Canyon National Park in early evening. Steve had rented out a little cabin for the week, and they did a grocery run before their arrival. The park would be there in the morning, and it would be better in the sunlight.

“What should we have for dinner?” Steve said as they put the groceries away.

“If we don’t want this cabin to go up in flames, I think we should let you handle cooking.”

“You’re the one who watches all those cooking shows.”

“And somehow none of them sink in,” Bucky said. 

“I don’t really know how to cook, you know,” Steve said. “I just put stuff on other stuff and stick it on the burner hoping for the best.”

Bucky snuck a kiss to the corner of Steve’s mouth. “Whatever you want, sweet cheeks. You know I ain’t picky.”

In the end, Steve put a mess of chicken, vegetables, potatoes and seasonings in a casserole dish with some olive oil, shoved it all in the oven, and set the timer for an hour. He joined Bucky in the den, where he was bent before the fire place fanning some embers. Steve wolf-whistled and poked him in the bum with a toe. Bucky twisted around and gave him a disapproving scowl, but the effect was destroyed by the way a smile kept threatening to curl his lips. 

Steve settled on the couch and admired the view. Bucky swiped at the hair that fell into his face.

“It’s not cooperating,” he said. “It keeps snuffing out.”

“Try, try again,” Steve said. Bucky made a face at him before turning back to the glow he had cultivated. He grabbed a bellow to pump into the embers. The line of his back was powerful, and his shoulders were broad and strong, and the muscles in his arm were hard and sculpted. The tip of his tongue came out between his lips as his brows drew down in concentration. The low light dappled across his skin, throwing shadows and deepening the sharp contours of his face. Steve’s heart picked up speed. For as long as he knew what it was to want someone, he had wanted Bucky, and sometimes the enduring force of that desire still took him unawares. If he were standing, he would have staggered.

He swallowed past the dryness of his mouth and stood up. 

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay just like that, okay?”

Bucky looked up, eyes wide. “Huh?”

“Just, stay like that. Or take your shirt off, that would be fine too.”

A slow smile spread across Bucky’s face. “Oh, really?”

“Stay there. You’re impossible.” Steve beat it to the bedroom, where he’d stashed their saddlebags. Bucky called after him.

“You say that like you don’t love it, Rogers!”

Steve shook his head and rifled through his bag for the colored pencils and sketch pad. He took off his own pants and button-down, leaving him in a tank and boxer-briefs. He grabbed the lube just in case. He went back out, supplies in hand, and found Bucky tending the fire in the nude.

“You know, there’s such a thing as overkill,” Steve said. 

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bucky said. He leaned over too far, considering he had a poker in the fire and its whole job was to keep anyone from having to get too close. He was purposefully flexing his abs. 

Steve tried out an exasperated sigh, but the gleam in Bucky’s sidelong glance told him how transparent he was. He sat on the couch and propped the case of pencils up on the cushion beside him. They were a gorgeous, pristine array, and he was going to love messing them up good. He cracked his knuckles and ran his fingertips over the line of pencils. He picked up a deep brown to start with and twiddled it in his fingers before slashing a line down the righthand side of the page. This would be Bucky’s back. 

Steve sketched him out in shapes, and filled him out in colors and detail. He became a thing of fire and heat, there on the page, under Steve’s hands. Even his scars, and his stump, and all the things he’d tried to hide shone bright and beautiful as Steve rendered them with all the love that simmered in the bowl of his heart. It was full now, full and boiling over.

Love, he found, was not so pretty a thing that he could not see it for what it was: a consuming force that tore him down even as it quenched what was parched within him. He had turned his back on SHIELD, on the Avengers, and on the mission, all so he could be unbound with this beautiful fracture of a man who carried with him the countless souls who’d died at his hands. Steve was no fool — the lines between the man he had known and the man the Red Room had fashioned were more blurred than Steve would ever admit aloud. That was definitive proof that there was nothing Bucky could do that would rob him of Steve’s love, and Steve could not even bring himself to fear that. Sometimes, he dreamt of them both drenched in blood, Steve kissing each of Bucky’s fingertips in turn, flesh and metal, flesh and metal. 

No, love was not a trip through the botanical gardens, or the perfect way Bucky’s body fit against Steve’s no matter how big or small he was. Love was a fire built on blood and bone. You just had to be willing to become the ash.

Steve set aside his drawing halfway finished. The fire was really going now, and Bucky knelt beside it, gazing into it as if meditating. His skin was a panorama of flame. Steve shuffled out of his clothes and crawled to him. He took his face in his hands, and Bucky blinked as if Steve’s very presence were surprising. Steve kissed him, slow and deep. Bucky grasped him by the back of the neck and kissed him back. It felt like a vow. 

They didn’t say anything. Steve bore Bucky down onto the floor and prepared himself quickly before straddling Bucky’s hips and sinking down onto his cock with a groan. He threw his head back and let himself be wholly in the moment, connected to Bucky in the most elemental way he could fathom. Slowly, he began to rock his hips, and Bucky answered with counterpoint thrusts that had Steve’s breath coming more ragged. 

He felt Bucky’s hand stroke up his body to land over his heart. Steve forced his eyes open and found Bucky looking up at him as if he had all the answers in an unknowable universe. Steve leaned down to brace his hands on either side of Bucky’s head and he pressed their cheeks together. He said his name, once. They kissed, and their hips picked up speed, and the fill and stretch of Bucky’s cock inside him became an urgency Steve could no longer ignore. He snapped his hips in a punishing rhythm, and when Bucky gripped Steve’s cock, he matched him stroke for stroke. Steve’s thighs began to shake and he propped himself up again to get Bucky inside himself as deep as he could go. 

“Stevie,” Bucky whispered, voice broken, and Steve felt his whole body tighten up, spine lit like a fuse. The roll of his hips stuttered and Bucky was inside him and he was going to become something new and whole together with him, something that the Almighty Himself could not tear asunder. His breath caught and his eyes closed and his orgasm burst from him like the rush of an exploding star. His body was racked with aftershocks until he slumped boneless into Bucky’s chest. Bucky held him close, stroking his shoulders, his back, his ass. “I got you,” he was saying into Steve’s hair. “I got you.”

Steve eventually found it in himself to stop crushing Bucky and slid off him. He lay on his stomach with his head pillowed in his arms as Bucky shifted onto his side and traced nonsense patterns onto his back. 

“You know how I know I’m sure about you, Rogers?” he said.

Steve could only hum in response.

“Because in a hundred years, you’re the choice I keep making again and again, and I’ve never had cause to regret it.”

Steve turned his head so he could peer at Bucky. His hair was a wild tangle, no longer held in place by an elastic, and he was lit from behind by firelight. The lines around his eyes made him look like he’d spent a lifetime laughing instead of hurting. He looked happy. 

“I will always choose you,” Bucky said. 

“Me too.” Steve’s voice came out rough. “You and me, Buck. Every time.”

Bucky smiled softly and leaned over to kiss his shoulder. He kissed that spot between his shoulder blades that made him shiver, and his kissed down his spine until he was kissing his tailbone, too, and the center of both of his ass cheeks.

“Stevie?”

Steve grunted.

“Can I see your asshole?”

Steve pushed his face further into his arms as a laugh bubbled out of his throat, but he shifted enough to pull one knee up anyway. He could feel a dollop of Bucky’s come slip out of him.

“Pretty,” Bucky murmured. He traced a fingertip around the wet rim. He was hot and over-sensitized, probably a little swollen. “You were always so pretty, Steve.”

“You know you were the only one who thought so, before.”

“They didn’t know what they were missing,” Bucky said. He pushed Steve’s legs further apart and settled down between them. “More for me, anyway.” He pulled Steve’s right ass cheek away from his left and licked him from the seam of his balls to the end of his tailbone. Steve gasped and thumped his feet against the wood floor. His ass was raw, his nerve endings buzzing, and Bucky was doing _that_. His cock began to fill again.

“Buck,” he said, choked, “if you’re not careful…”

“We got time,” Bucky said. He pushed his face back into the crack of Steve’s ass and set to work licking him out in earnest. Steve’s eyes rolled back and stars gathered behind his eyelids. His hole was loose and it gave way easily to Bucky’s tongue. The fire crackled and warmed his skin. Bucky seemed content to suck softly at Steve’s ass, in no hurry at all, and Steve was certainly content to let him.

Of course, the oven timer had to go off sometime.

—

On their third day at the Grand Canyon, they set out before daybreak and dangled their feet over the edge of a cliff to watch the sun rise. Dawn stained the rocky earth pink and orange. Steve felt like a tiny thing, a speck wandering around on the face of the Earth, but a powerful speck, somehow. Like he had a destiny, and he could grab it by the horns. Like the entire span of human history was comprised of specks, and he got to be one, too.

“Hey, Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“You still believe in God?”

Steve watched a turkey vulture pitch and soar in the distance. The only sounds in his ears were the wind, the rustle of his and Bucky’s clothes, and his own heartbeat. He knew Bucky didn’t have much use for God. He even knew Bucky had good reasons for it, and he understood them. But he wasn’t a liar, and both of them knew that, too.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes a miracle looks you in the face, and it’s hard not to.” He waved a hand at the sprawl of beauty before them, but his eyes were locked on Bucky. Bucky pointedly stared off over the chasm.

“Took a lot of heartache to get us here, Steve,” he said quietly. “And a hell of a body count.”

“But we’re here, and we’re alive, and we’re together,” Steve said. “Do you know the odds of that?”

“I’m sure Stark has calculated it somewhere.”

“I’ll ask him when we get back.”

They lapsed into silence again. The rays of the sun began to cool enough that the sky eased its way back to blue.

“Are we going back?” Bucky said.

“I thought we would,” Steve said. “Eventually.”

“But not in any hurry.”

“Nowhere I’d rather be than where you are, Buck.”

“Okay. Okay.”

Steve shifted and scooted over enough to press his chest into Bucky’s back and frame his thighs with his own. 

“You all right?” he asked.

“I think I want to keep going,” Bucky said. “I want to see Big Sur. I want to see the Rockies and the Appalachians and everything in between. I want to see what we died to keep safe.”

“And you don’t want to see anyone we know.”

“Is that okay?”

“I don’t mind.”

A flock of birds rose up and scattered on the other side of the canyon. They dipped and weaved in formation, an undulating swarm, and Steve watched them until they disappeared into the horizon.

“Can I tell you what I think of God?” Bucky said when they were gone.

“Sure, Buck.”

“I don’t think He’s a man in the sky who wants to scold us for being in love. I think He’s what vastness is — the thing we can’t conceive of because it’s too huge. He is the expanse and indifference and beauty of the universe. He’s the feeling you get when there’s nothing and no one for miles, and you look up into the sky and all you see are billions of stars that have already gone out somewhere millions of years ago. And He’s the spark inside you that makes you capable of tenderness, even when everything you’ve known has been sharp and painful.”

Steve had nothing to say to that. Even if he did, the thickness that had gathered at the base of his throat would have stopped him. He tugged Bucky closer and squeezed him tighter. He nodded into the juncture of Bucky’s neck and shoulder.

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Wanna get hitched?”

A puff of air left Steve’s nose like a shot — some kind of hysterical single laugh.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Okay. We’ll do it next time we’re somewhere it’s legal.”

“I don’t think I got the physique for a dress.”

“Don’t worry,” Bucky said. “I heard there’s a silhouette for everyone these days.”

Steve set his nose on the top of Bucky’s ear. Sunlight spilled bright through the canyon, but Steve looked to the deepening shadows for proof of life. 

**End**


End file.
